Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday August 02, 2017 @06:00PM
from the record-breaking dept.

On July 29, 2017, Hyperloop One competed a test at its full-scale Nevada test track that travelled a high speed, running nearly the entirety of the 500 meter (1640 foot) test route. "XP-1, the company's first Hyperloop pod, reached speeds of up to 192 mph during the test, which is getting closer to the planned functional speeds of future Hyperloop installations planned for Dubai elsewhere," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The new test breaks the recorded speed record for any Hyperloop tests ever conducted, including those done by research organizations participating in SpaceX's pod design competition. It was conducted on July 29, 2017, and included a 300 meter acceleration phase, with gradual breaking to come to a stop after that point. Hyperloop One depressurized the tube for the test track down to conditions similar to those at 200,000 feet above sea level, which is part of the Earth's atmosphere where there is very little friction and resistance to the rarified air. The company says that all aspects of the system, from motors, to electronics, to the vacuum pump and magnetic levitation mechanism worked well during the test.

Not content with smashing elementary subatomic particles, not content even with accelerating protons or lead ions, now they want to accelerate people, inside long evacuated tubes, to ridiculous speeds.

The team believes they’d need an additional 2,000 meters (about 1.2 miles) of track to achieve a max theoretical speed of 700 mph for the test pod, which is what it could possible reach in real-world commercial systems.

It is a test. Who cares if it is "better"? It is an experiment to see what the problems are.Did you ever accelerate on 500 yards to nearly 200mph and braked down to zero again? I guess you lack imagination (science knowledge) to grasp what a deed that already is.

It covered nearly the entirety of the 1640 foot meter test track? And hit 192 MPH?

Let's be generous and say it traveled one third of a mile, and let's assume it accelerated linearly (it didn't) from 0 to an instantaneous peak of 192 MPH, then immediately decelerated linearly back to 0 (and stopped). That gives an average velocity of 96 MPH.

That's gonna be trippy riding inside. Since there are no windows, you only have the apparent direction of gravity (acceleration) to determine "up". It's going to feel like you're in a plane climbing up at a 51 degree angle. That is, anyone trying to stand while this is going on is going to be leaned forward at 51 degrees relative to vertical at rest. (I'll add that the earlier test to 69 MPH in 30 meters is 1.68g, giving an apparent inclination of 58 degrees.)

The test track is short so a huge acceleration is currently needed to reach a significant speed. The final version, if it ever exists, will probably require a smaller acceleration but for a longer time.

Let's assume a desired speed S = 700km/h ~= 200m/s at a constant acceleration A = 0.1g = 1m/s^2 (that is a typical acceleration in a train). The acceleration time is T = S / A = 200 / 1 = 200s = 3m20s. Also the average speed during the acceleration phase is S/2 = 100m/s so the required distance is 100m/s * 2

That's gonna be trippy riding inside....., anyone trying to stand while this is going on is going to be leaned forward at 51 degrees relative to vertical at rest.

I don't suppose the passenger version will accelerate that hard. This was to test the behaviour of the hardware at speed. Next step will be to extend the track and reach a higher speed. After that they will need to try a test track with curves. They have not yet begun to address the issue of what people can actually put up with in terms of acceleration (in all three axes) with no reference horizon. They will need some human guinea pigs for that. It did not go too well when high-speed tilting trains were

Can someone enlighten me with info about the throughput of this system of small high-speed capsules? A regular trains and airplanes transport large number of people at once, making them economically scalable.

(I am not interested in getting involved in an abstract discussion about all this, but would certainly welcome any reliable source of information about the exact conditions of this test)

From the small real chunks in the video and the limited information in the linked article, I understand that:- We are talking about accelerating a small vehicle (as big as a small truck?) from zero to 300 km/h in 300 m and then keeping that speed for about 500 m.- It seems that it is a kind of a small train (better: the sma

Trains are problematic in the US for numerous reasons, so even having a "fast" train won't solve many issues. Japan has a functional train system with cities designed around them. citation [wikipedia.org] but once you need to get away from the main train station the novelty of trains quickly wears off.

Not exactly. At the beginning their towns and cities were destroyed to make train lines to no small effect on the people whose land was needed. That's true everywhere but in the U.S. you seem to have more problems than elsewhere getting land from trains.

Do you really think they had no trains before WWII? Or the rest of the world? Germany was quite destroyed too... but funnily most main stations are still at the same spot they where before the war. One notable exception is the Berlin main statin because it is a new one (the old one still exists, though).

Trains are problematic in the US for numerous reasons, so even having a "fast" train won't solve many issues. Japan has a functional train system with cities designed around them.

That's because the rest of the world has had trains for a long time, and the US is brand new to this.

Wow. In what alternate universe do you reside where this is true?

(I remember seeing an infographic back in the 80s or so that showed a then-and-now "map" of the relative rail density in the US in the 60s and 80s. We've dismantled something like 80% of our rail capacity. There's a difference, IMO, between "being new to this" and having dismantled our infrastructure [in favor of highways and trucking].)

It was a sarcastic remark to the idea that Japan has a functional train system with cities built around them, which implies that we don't. Trains have an integral part in the history of North America,

America has at least one political party that views trains with a jaundiced eyes, probably left over from the heyday of trains here, when that party wanted to be sure to bust the unions that were involved with the train industry. That's an educated guess. At this time we are slowly coming around to the idea o

Stop making excuses and just get in with it. Eurostar has totally out performed the airlines and you could expect something between many US cities.

Come on now - what I wrote doesn't even rise to the level of a Poe. Its pretty obvious that the US was a world leader at one time in installing ad using train transportation. The idea that we need to catch up with the rest of the world because we don't have any experience in train transportation is silly.

The reason that the US is behind the curve with high speed trains is because we have lost the will to do such things, and are well along the way to ceding technological superiority to the rest of the wor

If this becomes real, and if there were an accident, I'd hate to be the guy that has to scrape off what's left of the passengers from whatever they collided with. 700mph..cheesh.. a thin layer of organic goo and a fine red mist.

I'd be more worried about a propulsion failure. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, and if you exit the vehicle you suffer explosive decompression. If you don't exit the vehicle, you die when your oxygen supply runs out. No thanks.

The tube can be rapidly re-pressurized in case of emergencies. That's a key safety feature in case of a vehicle hull breach. Oxygen masks would probably still be required, similar to airlines.

As far as propulsion failures, I believe each vehicle has on-board power enough to travel to an emergency exit point. No idea about what would happen if the vehicle gets stuck for some other reason, though, or if on-board propulsion fails. Likely, people experience a very long, uncomfortable wait as emergency worke

Yeah, and ppl like you have correctly pointed out that musk would never get a rocket company off the ground, let alone have it be the cheapest and reuse rockets.
Likewise, electric cars will never beat ICE and a new car company will never make in America.
Thank God that ppl like you exist to mess with the stock market.

If hyperloop really builds out with 2 miles and can show that they are much cheaper, then CA will either switch, OR, musk will start boring between SF to LA, or perhaps LA to SD, and prove this long before cahst starts.

I was listening to an interview with one of the team members on NPR. Apparently, the biggest problem they face trying to go faster is the test track is too short! In other words, they've built the pods to go faster, but until they upgrade the track they won't be able to test it.

I was listening to an interview with one of the team members.. the biggest problem they face trying to go faster is the test track is too short! In other words, they've built the pods to go faster, but until they upgrade the track they won't be able to test it.

Thanks for that pearl of wisdom. We didn't realise they need some distance to get up speed. Shame that. OTOH my car can reach 60mph without moving from the spot.

In case it helps you understand what is going on here, the first time the ThrustSSC moved under its own, it hit a whole 70 miles [thrustssc.com] an hour! And that was using technologies that have been around for over 40 years.

Now you want to do it with an entirely brand new technology. You want them go straight to 310 KM/h, do you?